For context - We have lived in a 2 bedroom 1.5 bath walk up in a large city for 2 years. There is also a spigot outback (12x8 concrete patio).
We rented through a large property mgmt company and auto pay our rent and water through the portal. Only time we ever interact is for annual renewal signing and some routine maintenance. I received an email that our water has not been billed since jun-22 due to an admin error and we back-owed for the ~8 months. They sent the monthly amounts which averaged $45 for July - January. Our average usage is 2-3 ccfs per month (1500-2000 gallons). However, the jun-22 bill was $2200. The bill they sent as proof showed 282 ccfs of water usage. That is 210k gallons…or about a ¼ of an Olympic sized swimming pool. Nothing was different about our usage and this would be an impossible amount of water to miss.
Mgmt emailed us about high usage (not mentioning the magnitude of the absurdly high amount, back in June). A maintenance guy came out, found no leak and then said maybe it’s the neighbor. He left and that was last we heard about it.
It turns out mgmt disputed the charge and the water dept confirmed it based on the meter reading. The owners apparently agreed to the water depts documentation and paid the bill. Now 8 months later they are trying to make us pay for this absurd amount. I pushed back but they said the dispute is closed and there’s nothing they can do.
Mgmt mentioned that the meter was also replaced in that month. But apparently they’ve assumed we used years worth of water in 1 month.
The lease states we are liable for all utilities based on meter usage. I don’t fully follow some of the language but obviously seems landlord friendly.
This is obviously a usage reading error and the owners foolishly paid it without talking with us about the ridiculous amount. I’ve googled some and never seen a bill quoted at near this amount. Most were for $200-300.
How would you proceed?
Submitted February 05, 2023 at 02:58AM by OnTheFritz https://ift.tt/kernJuD
